


The Art of Peace and War

by FauxPax



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Finale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 10:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FauxPax/pseuds/FauxPax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post S1 Finale. The best way to defeat an enemy is to strike close to home, destroying everything they care about. In going after the first witness's friend and son, Moloch did just that. But it's possible to take it too far, and in doing so he may have given the witnesses exactly what they needed to stop the horsemen from riding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Peace and War

The first thing Jenny noticed as she opened her eyes, was that something wasn't quite right. It took her a moment to realize what it was...or more what it wasn't. She was standing in the middle of the same road she had been on before she had faced death (or whatever the term was given him being headless) but there was nothing else around her. Her car had flipped at least twice and yet there was no glass on the road, no twisted metal and no truck. Even the trees were quiet, void of any sign of life. 

Gooseprickles ran up her arms and around her neck. Jenny looked around hoping to find a gun, a knife, hell even a sharp rock that she could use as a weapon. She should have known better. 

This feeling wasn't completely foreign to her. A couple of times during her travels she had come across some artifact that freaked her out just as much. Every time it had been a dangerous and evil thing and every time she had gotten the hell out of there, running as far as she could in the other direction. 

But that wasn't an option now. It was the very air itself giving her that feeling and there was no other direction to head towards. All she could do was keep walking. 

Jenny had to find out some way to get out of here—where ever here was. There was no way Abbie had gotten the message and they all trusted Parish too much to suspect him which is what made him the prefect little spy. Who would expect the mosey old man who had helped Crane and had been hesitant to join their odd little family to begin with? 

As she walked, the forest gave way to a small field and Jenny found that she had managed to find herself back at the old church but it was no longer dilapidated. Now it looked just like any church, well kept and whitewashed (even if the strange gray sunlight gave it a dirty tint) but more then that it had a congregation. Dozens people milled about on the lawn, several of them were missing arms or legs or even heads while others drug anchors or shivered facelessly in their own misery. 

This had to be hell or at least—

A twig snapped behind her and she turned, every muscle on high alert as she reached for her nonexistent gun. 

“Who are you?” She demanded, staring him down. 

The boy was in his late teens dressed in cloths from Crane's era, with dark hair and a chiseled jaw. Jenny hadn't met him before, that much she was sure of, and yet there was something familiar and unsettling about him that she couldn't place. It was his eyes...she had seen them before, older, colder but exactly the same. 

But where?

“You can see me?” he asked tentatively. He was a little scared and a little surprised and didn't even try to hide it.

“Why wouldn't I?” 

He pursed his lips and quickly darted his eyes from left to right as if looking for something. The boy was on just as high of alert as she was and that was far from a comforting though given how little she knew about wherever she was. 

“Most souls are trapped within their own minds.” He said, his diction about as dated as his cloths. 

“Souls? This is purgatory.” It wasn't a question but it did leave many in her mind. Like how did she get here and was she dead, among others. 

He nodded once and although his face was expressive, it was also unreadable. 

“So I’m dead.” 

“Possibly.” 

“So then why am I not trapped in my head like the rest of these guys? And why not you?” 

The boy stayed silent for a moment, looking down. He either didn't want to say or was considering his words carefully. She gave him a moment to collect his thoughts but her patience was waring thin. Whoever this kid was, he sure as hell didn't like answering questions but she didn't have time to deal with this bullshit. Jenny had to find a way out of here and worn Abbie before Parish tries something bad. 

Finally he opened his mouth, ready to speak but stopped. Something off to the west (or at least as close as Jenny could tell in this sunless light) caught his attention. 

"Do you feel that?" he said, almost frightened. 

"Feel what?" Jenny asked, wondering if he was trying to distract her, but the moment the last word fell from her lips she understood. The stagnate air had gotten colder and although the light hadn't changed, everything seemed darker. A sinister sound rang in her ears, some whispered shout in an unintelligible language that sounded like stale wind and dieing animals. 

"He's coming." The boy whispered and Jenny didn't have to ask who. Only one creature could twist her stomach into such knots without her even seeing them. "We have to get you to safety." 

He grabbed her arm, careful not to touch her bare skin and began pulling her deeper into the woods. She was in good shape yet unfamiliar with the area so the boy took the lead and would not allow their pace to slacken, not that she wanted to. Moloch was getting closer, she could feel it, and in a blink he was there, just a few yards away. 

"We're not going to out run him!" 

"I know." The boy said, pulling her sharply left. Jenny could hear the calculation in his voice and knew that he had something up his sleeve. Maybe it would be enough against Moloch or maybe not. Either way, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Maybe trusting him so completely was a bad idea even if she didn't have much choice, after all didn't a similar thing happen with Parish and look how that turned out. 

They kept running until they came to a tree that had grown sideways like it had been tied down as a sapling. The boy stopped, pressing his back against the crooked trunk and turned to face the demon. Every instinct in Jenny screamed. Why stop? Moloch was going to catch up...

The boy smiled an insidious little smile that made his hansom face look rather sinister and pull a slightly rusted knife from where it had been buried into the bark of the tree. Just when Jenny was sure she had been right—that the boy would turn out not to be a friend—he took the knife and sliced his own palm. 

When the blood touched the tree, the red smear glowed as didn't identical marks on half a dozen near by trees forming a ring around them. Branches grew and entangled themselves together, creating a thick wall all around them, separating them from Moloch. 

"As impressive as that was, we're still stuck." Jenny breathed, not quite able to hide her surprise. 

The boy's lips twitched upwards a little in a ghost of a smile before he pushed aside some brush, revealing a trap door in the ground like the entrance to a cellar of some long-destroyed house. 

"Even if he finds the door he can't get in. Only those with a fragment of humanity can." There was something unnerving about the way he said it that Jenny couldn't really place. Was it pride? Hatred? Or had she just been seeing more shadows since learning about Parish? 

Either way...

“You first, I insist.” She didn't trust him enough to turn her back to him.

Jenny followed him down the ladder but what she saw made her stop. The hallway was not a normal one by far. Where a normal house would have had tables and lamps and bookshelves, it only had brightly colored stickers stuck to the walls and on the walls themselves were scrawled morbid motivational messages in bright red crayon. 

Don't be scared. 

She knew this house. She had been eight when she and Abbie had found it on the curb and taken it home. How many times had they escaped into it when their lousy excuse for a father was just a little too drunk and their mom too lost in her own mind to notice? How many times had Abby forced them to play with beheaded barbies and whatever else they could find, all the while raising her voice as she spoke for the dolls, trying to drowned out the sound of their parents fighting? 

“Jenny?” 

Jenny turned and saw Abbie sitting there with two girls she knew well. One she had seen every day growing up until Moloch tore it all apart and the other seen slightly less often—only while looking in the mirror.

“What the hell?” she muttered as young her sat down at the brightly colored plastic table. 

“Actually I think what the purgatory might be more suiting.” Young Jenny smirked, ignoring the look both visions of her sister gave her. 

“How are you here?” Abbie asked, bringing the conversation back on point, unable to completely hide the fear in her voice. “What happened? Jenny, don't you dare tell me you're—”

“No. It doesn't work that way.” In all the commotion Jenny had kind of forgotten about the boy lingering in the doorway, keeping to the shadows as if he didn't belong. 

“Not to sound ungrateful for the help, but who are you?” Jenny asked. 

“And what do you mean 'it doesn't work that way.” Abbie added.

The boy's hands twitched and he looked down at the floor. “Me, I am no one important. And all the souls who belong here—the ones being judged—are trapped in their own mind and in your own hells. Your sister has no glaring sin that hasn't been addressed so she wouldn't be in purgatory to remedy that. She must have wanted to find you enough for her soul come here when she was hurt.” 

“Alright,” she said turning to Jenny, “what's going on?” 

“I guess you didn't get my message after all.” Not that she was surprised. That would have been just a little too convient for them. 

“What message?” 

“That the saint's name was literally a sign. Corbin's notes lead me to an old abandoned church called St. Henry's Parish.” 

Jenny watched Abbie's face as she digested that information but that wasn't the only reaction she was paying attention to. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as the boy tensed, but again the emotions behind the reaction were unclear. Whatever this boy was hiding, he knew more about what was going on then he let on. 

“Okay I did my w and tell now your turn. What the hell is going on here?” She asked her sister, motioning to their younger selves.

Abbie sighed. “Apparently they are our us...or at least part of us that held the memories from when we saw Moloch in the woods. He didn't want us to remember that we saw him raise War.” 

Anger rose. Moloch had already had her possessed and taken their childhood. Was not even their memories safe? What was she thinking. There was nothing sacred to a demon. 

“If war's already in Sleepy Hollow...?”

“It's Parish. It has to be. We need to get out of here now!” Abbie said. 

“You can't. This is your home now.” Her younger self said, taking that same authoritative tone she used to use on Jenny when they were kids, but Jenny was unsurprised to see how much it didn't work on her older counterpart. 

Watching Abbie arguing with herself wasn't what had her attention. Jenny watched her younger self stare at the boy, measuring him as his mussels tightened and his fingers clutched into a fist. Jenny didn't know him well enough to know why this conversation was pressing his buttons, but it was big time. 

“You've been here a lot longer then we have, so you would know better. Is there a way you could help them?” 

“They would not want help from me.” he muttered, talking to young Jenny as if the rest of them weren't there. 

Young Jenny scoffed. “But you want to help. I've figured you out, you know. You speak in riddles and puzzles but I’ve put the pieces together. I know why you helped keep us safe and I know why you want so bad to undo what he's done. What good is being every good memory you ever had if you never do anything good with it?” 

“Alright,” the boy snapped, twitching with agitation, “I’ve just...reaching between worlds is beyond anything i've ever tried before. I can make an attempt, but I can promise nothing more.” 

Abbie's eyes narrowed slightly and for the first time since coming to this strange doll house, the boy looked them in the eyes. He was terrified but Jenny couldn't even guess at what. 

He walked over sticker placed doorway and placed his still bleeding palm on the doorknob. The door cracked and shattered until all that could be seen beyond it was the forest around Sleepy Hollow. 

“Here,” Young Abbie told her counterpart and touched her forehead before disappearing in a flash of light. 

“Where’s she go?” Jenny asked. 

“Back in Abby's head. Now she'll remember.” Young Jenny replied. 

“Miss Mills you must hurry. I can not keep this open for long. You must wake your sister up from your world. Because she only came here in spirit, she can not leave by this door. I will do my best to keep her safe until then.” 

Abbie looked back at Jenny, unsure, but Jenny just nodded. It was their only choice. "Miss Mills?" he asked, heating. "Tell them...tell them I said no at first." 

He seemed so Ernest, as if everything in him needed them (whoever they were) to know that. Of course it didn't exactly help that, according to Abbie's face, she had no idea who she was supposed to deliver the message to. The boy didn't give her time to ask. He just shoved her through the doorway. 

When the wind quieted and the door returned to its normal state, Jenny just looked at the boy and then to her younger self. 

“Now what?” she muttered.

The boy's lip twitched. 

“We wait.”


End file.
